A Letter from the Past (Part 2)

Yesterday, I provided some extracts from the large anthology I found entitled Entertainment Arts in Australia.

The introduction to the anthology says:
It is hoped that Entertainment Arts in Australia will be the first of many, since the arts need continual reassessment just as a person or country needs to objectively analyse aims, motives and purpose. In a country on the verge of its own discovery, the identities of the arts and the nation merge, and interaction between them is of the essence of progress to both.

This letter from 1968 continues.

The Directors of 1968

One of the most important changes in the formal theatre this century has been the rise in importance of the director. From the old actor-manager system at the turn of the century with the emphasis on one man, the ensemble approach of a group of actors under the direction of an individual has gained ascendancy...

The role of the playwright has merged into this shifting structure. The relation of Chekhov to the Moscow Arts Theatre, or Brecht to the Berliner Ensemble, was more than just that of the ordinary writer to the theatre...

The impact of the new group approach first came to Australia with the work of Hayes Gordon at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney. It was quickly matched by the work of Wal Cherry at the Emerald Hill in Melbourne, and both theatres made great advances in the training of actors and the group presentation of plays. The work of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in London has shown that this form of theatrical experiment is highly dependent on subsidy, and the early efforts of Gordon and Cherry soon floundered.

The equivalents of these theatres now exist in the Melbourne Theatre Company and the Old Tote Theatre in Sydney. At MTC, the work of George Ogilvie in his studio workshop classes has won the enthusiasm and support of his actors, but has so far not reached fruition on the stage of the Russell Street Theatre.

At the Tote, students at NIDA are starting to develop an ensemble approach under the guidance of tutors. Eventually the work of these two theatres can be expected to bring us the excitement of this new style for which the important plays of the modern theatre are being written.

The obvious gap in both of them is the existence of a playwrights' workshop where the third member of the modern theatre trio may be absorbed into a suitably Australian theatre. The mere commissioning of plays is not sufficient - the exciting theatre of the next decade will grow from a living relationship between actors, directors and playwrights, not out of single elements working in isolation.


Robin Lovejoy - Co-Artistic Director, The Old Tote
Quintessentially, I discover only one important direction in the theatre. It boils down to only one common factor, and that is that I am using all these things to ask you "Do you know I'm here?" And if you say "Yes", then I have succeeded. The theatre has stopped being a place to go to in order to stand off and feel grateful that you are allowed to touch a little. It has become a place in which you can worship freely. It was a temple and it is now something else - it is now just a circle of stones. It has become more primitive, and therefore more attainable, a more available place in which the audience is in a peculiar way more important while being less important. It is more important because the audience participates more... and less important because it is no longer a big sort of communal monster to be worshipped or feared. The more theatre breaks away into small individual personality theatres, the less important the commercial audience is, and the more important the "I am here, where are you?" attitude becomes.


John Clark - Director, Old Tote Theatre
There is a lack of professional dramatists in Australia. I think one harks back to the sort of influence that someone like Eugene O'Neil had on the American Theatre. We all of course thought this was going to happen here when Summer of the Seventeenth Doll hit the deck some years back but it faded away...
I hope that the theatre of the future will lose some of its stuffiness. I would hope one the basis of seeing shows like Brook's Marat Sade that the theatre is moving right away from naturalism, and I think this really wise because naturalism chucked out of the theatre so much that really makes a performance hum.


George Ogilvie - Melbourne Theatre Company
My biggest aim is to have a company of actors who are expert enough - with myself who I hope at that time will be expert enough - to be able to take a script of, say, Troilus & Cressida, and enjoy interpreting this play without having qualms about the technical talent interpreting it. But I also believe in transitory theatre. I think that the idea of a state decentralised theatre is marvellous because it would allow me to do, say, one or two years of something there and then shift over. Get a new image. I'd like to be attached to a theatre where, having done a Three Sisters, you could then go mad in experimental theatre - just go crazy. One need this sort of catalyst constantly.


Doris Fitton - Director, Independent Theatre
The future changes in theatre will depend very much on the plays. Since they are written in a stylised vein - I think the modern approach is stylised - this will alter the interpretation of character. if the trend towards the unreal play develops, then unreal performances will be demanded. I think the well-made play will come back in turn. I think in many cases people prefer it. Older people, anyway. I think the young always want experiment. I myself prefer the well-made play.


Hayes Gordon - Director, Ensemble Theatre
We have to be a bit jealous or suspicious of sources of support, lest we end in the position of whose bread we eat, his song we sing. It is absolutely imperative that we have a free voice. The original concept of the theatre was a theatre predicated on public need rather than professional need. I think that in general, theatre is going in the direction of popular theatre. It is going to reflect communal needs more and more, rather than the esoteric needs of a community which can be supplied by, for example, operas and ballets. These can titillate a section of the audience, but they don't answer the immediate needs of the community.


Irene Mitchell - Director, St Martins Theatre Company
My aim is to develop more and more the young side of the theatre. To know what the young people are thinking is vitally important to the theatre.
I think audiences are fed up with everything in a condensed form. Everything is condensed on television for us so that we do not have to do any thinking...
I don't like the stage that theatre is in at the moment - I don't think it is an exciting stage. I am not pessimistic about it, but I just feel that it needs some great big injection, and it must come from the writers. There are not enough poets in the theatre, I think.


George Fairfax - St Martin's Theatre Company
Theatre has to be theatrical to succeed. We must establish for people that they are coming to the theatre for a theatrical experience. I believe that there are enough people with enthusiasm for the theatre to make sure it will succeed. It is necessary for people in authority to change their attitudes - press, governments etc. It is up to us to produce a better product and make a better impression. We have been accused of having a captive, middle-aged audience. The whole business of selling is important in all aspects of life - supermarkets and bonus films - and we must sell theatre that way too.

Tomorrow - a profile on the Old Tote & the Melbourne Theatre Company.... how much have they changed?


Image: Bertolt Brecht from theoldvaultradio.org
All extracts above are from:
Entertainment Arts in Australia
Copyright Paul Hamlyn Pty Ktd 1968